Ina Garten and Jeffrey Garten tied the knot in 1968 and have been together for 56 years.
Ina Garten was only 15 years old when she first met her now-husband, Jeffrey Garten. The couple dated for five years before tying the knot in 1968 in her parents’ Connecticut backyard when she was 20 and he was 22.
Early on, Ina, 76, and Jeffrey, 77, decided not to have kids.
“I really appreciate that other people do — and we will always have friends that have children that we are close to — but it was a choice I made very early,” the Food Network star said on the “Katie Couric Podcast” in 2017.
“I really felt, I feel, that I would have never been able to have the life I’ve had,” Ina continued. “So, it’s a choice, and that was the choice I made.”
In 2023, the television personality shared more details on her decision.
When asked if she thought having children would hinder her career, the renowned chef responded, “Much harder” before explaining further.
“I don’t think that’s why I made the decision,” she clarified to BBC News’ Katty Kay. “I’m actually writing a memoir now, and I’m kind of looking back at my childhood. It was nothing I wanted to recreate.”
She added: “I’m always looking forward. To look back and realize a lot of my decisions were based on my childhood, I think that was really the motivating factor, and Jeffrey and I were just so happy together.”
In the five decades since, Ina has gone on to write 13 cookbooks, release a product line, host the long-running show “Barefoot Contessa” on Food Network, and host a new series called “Be My Guest with Ina Garten.”
Her husband has also been successful in his career. He joined the US Army Special Forces before working for several presidential administrations and on Wall Street.
Jeffrey has maintained a lower profile despite his wife being in the public eye for decades. Still, he has never wavered in showing his support, including the occasional cameo on Ina’s show.
The now Yale professor even made headlines after word spread that he accidentally sent a love text meant for Ina to the wrong person.
“My dear friend, who’s also my publicist, he sent a text to her, and he meant it for me, and he said, ‘You’re gonna be delicious tonight,’ and it went to her,” Ina revealed on “The Drew Barrymore Show in 2022. “She was like, ‘Whoa.’ She sent back, ‘I don’t think this was meant for me.’”
So, who is Ina Garten’s husband? Here’s everything to know about Jeffrey Garten and his 56-year marriage to the author.Jeff and Ina met through a mutual friend
Jeffrey first laid eyes on Ina during her visit to Dartmouth College in 1963 to visit her brother.
According to Food Network Magazine, Jeffrey was gazing out the library window and he said to his roommate, “Look at that girl, isn’t she beautiful?” His roommate knew her brother and made the connection.
“He saw me on the street and then sent me a letter with a photograph of himself in it,” the “Barefoot Contessa” star told People in 2018. “I just remember running through the house and going, ‘Mom, Mom, you’ve got to see this picture of this guy. He’s so cute!’ ”
Six months later, the pair had their first date.Their first date didn’t go as planned
Ina shared on her 2022 episode of “The Drew Barrymore” that her first date with Jeffrey was “a disaster.”
“Why he ever wanted to see me again, I have no idea,” Ina confessed. “I was in high school, and he was at Dartmouth, and he called, and we had a mutual friend, and he’d seen me walking around the campus at Dartmouth, and he asked the friend if he could call me.”
“So, he called, and I just knew he was a friend of the friend, and I thought, ‘Well, he’s a Dartmouth guy, so he probably wants to, like, go to a bar or something.’ I had never been to a bar and so I said, ‘Oh, let’s just go to this bar, Hilltop,’ like I’d been there many times.”
Ina played it cool until she got to the door and realized the bouncers wanted her identification.
